


The Night Before the Night Before

by Argyle



Category: The World's End (2013)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Yuletide, Yuletide 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle/pseuds/Argyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a niggling little hole inside of Gary: the bit of his person which had been connected to the Network was missing, yanked out like a plug from the socket, like a snail from its shell. In the part of his body where there was a head but no brain, he knew, rightly and intuitively, that he'd been shafted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Night Before the Night Before

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stellar_dust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellar_dust/gifts).



After the World's End went up in flames, taking Newton Haven with it— after Gary was buried beneath several thousand tons of molten debris, abandoned by his kind, left to navigate the ruined landscape with naught but the compulsion of his own reattached head and the forward momentum of his Doc Martin-shod feet, he had but one word on his tongue, which was this: _fuck._

It came to him so naturally, as if it'd been installed at birth. Or rather, boot-up.

Along with that one, tin soldiers in a queue, were _bollocks_ , _bugger_ , and _bloody hell_. For a two-week old, he was remarkably churlish, but he suspected this had to do with the fact that he was brought into the universe just as a notable part of it was biting the dust. It gave a guy a low outlook on life. Such as it was. And there was a niggling little hole inside him: the bit of his person which had been connected to the Network was missing, yanked out like a plug from the socket, like a snail from its shell. In the part of his body where there was a head but no brain, he knew, rightly and intuitively, that he'd been shafted.

"Fuck!" Gary screamed across an ashen field. He wondered what had grown there, before. Who had tended it, where they'd gone. The door to the abandoned farmhouse's cellar was open, so he stomped down the staircase and kicked through the rubbish that lined the floor. It was late, nearly dark, and he couldn't make much out, but he appreciated the way everything had a way of crunching beneath his heels.

He felt along the wall until he reached a corner, then slid down. The concrete was uncomfortable, but the place was at least only damp, not wet—which was more than could be said for where he'd come from. Outside, around and above him, a thunderclap sounded.

 

Gary's kind, those still functioning… The ones who were left behind. The Blanks, a term he was well aware humans used but couldn't himself stomach saying— Well. They didn't sleep. Couldn't, as far as he knew, inasmuch as he'd only ever observed his own nocturnal habits.

But he could tune-out, stretch his thoughts until he coasted through time, an hour, another, another, until the planet swung round and one more happy day was upon him.

And he could sing. Softly at first, scarcely more than a whisper. "I can feel the earth begin to move, I hear my needle hit the groove and spiral through..." He liked the way ambient noise would accentuate his tone and tempo, the drop-drop of water down a drainpipe, the scratch of dry vines on a windowpane.

Then, when there was no one around to hear him, far louder: "Have you seen her, have you heard? The way she plays… There are no words to describe the way I feel!"

Gary sang that one quite often. But of course there were others.

There had been hundreds, maybe _thousands_ of songs in King's head when the Network copied him. Some were complete, every lyric and drum beat playing out in perfect cadence. And some, far more, were simply fragments. Songs half-heard while King was ten beers deep, reeling and fumbling for coins to advance the jukebox. Songs King had heard on his car radio when his tape deck was busted.

Gary liked "She Bangs the Drums" because it was one of the former. And because it was one of the former, he knew King must've liked it too. Well, that and he could summon this down to the last molecule: King on a third play-through of _The Stone Roses_ , elevated and incandescent. Stoned out of his bloody gourd. It was February, a rainy Saturday, mid-afternoon, going on three—the wool shag of the sitting room rug was rough against King's hands as he cradled his head, the whole of him sprawled on the floor. He stared at the ceiling and belted out each line in time with Ian Brown… and to say that King's mum hadn't been pleased with him when she found out he'd blown the speakers on the hi-fi was a gross understatement. King promised to get them fixed, explaining with utmost clarity that he _knew_ a guy—

That's where the memory ended. Gary didn't know if King had kept the promise, but he didn't really care. He didn't think about any of it much. Or let it bother him.

Well and truly, Gary was his own man. Besides which, "She Bangs the Drums" was a bloody good song.

*

In the long days after, Gary did a lot of walking. He went south from Newton Haven, all the way down to London on the deserted B656, then on to Dover: he'd once seen an advert on a train platform – THE WHITE CLIFFS BECKON YOU – that had sufficiently intrigued him. And why not? It seemed a normal sort of thing to stare over the edge of everything and smell the sea-salt air.

Dawn was breaking when he arrived, staining the water with vast strokes of orange, red, and purple. The waves were calm— so calm that on the horizon he could make out half a dozen container ships, or tankers. They were far enough away as to be but dots on the water. But they were perfectly still, immobilized without their electronics.

Gary breathed in, took a seat on the verge, turned a bit of grass into a whistle, and stretched out to look at the glowing sky. It was nice. He felt warmth through to his core.

Part of him – the part, he reasoned, that had once been connected to vast intergalactic hive consciousness – wished that he had someone to share the moment with. Or to at least have a laugh: a guy in tatty Wellingtons had sat down twenty meters away and unpacked a microphone and wind-up radio transmitter from a cardboard box.

"Calais, come in Calais. This is Dover 29, over," he droned. "Calais, come in Calais…"

Gary did laugh, but there wasn't much mirth in it. He mostly watched the guy fiddle with his dials and knobs, and when the guy left, he simply looked out at the water.

Then he began to make his way back home.

*

A year passed and the human race getting on. Sure, there were the roving bands of thieves, murderers, and miscreants; the food supply was in a major state of transition; and communication routes had returned to what they'd been in the time of George I. But morale was generally good.

Of course, Gary wasn't a human. Thanks to the Network's extremely capable engineering, the stock and trade of progress they'd brought to a thousand other worlds across the galaxy, he'd always look eighteen. His hair would remain the same length it was the day he was first assembled. He'd never have to trim his fingernails, or shave his chin. He was impervious to sickness. He couldn't get a sunburn; or for that matter, a tan.

And yet he had to take care of himself. If things had gone according to the Network's plan, he'd have been able to pop round to a Hub for retooling whenever he fancied. But now even a small cut would permanently color his skin blue, and a large one— Well. He'd knotted a scarf about his neck the moment he pulled himself from the wreckage of the pub for that very reason.

It wasn't as if everyone hated him. Disliked? Yes, probably. To a lot of people, Gary was living proof that the planet had been seduced into encouraging a full-scale alien invasion. And those who _did_ find his existence unacceptable were easy to spot, or made their feelings known in short enough order.

So he learned to be discreet.

He learned to fit in.

*

"What'll you take for this one?" Gary asked, tapping his finger on a neat little volume: _The Selected Works of William Shakespeare_. It was coverless, mussed and stained, but the spine was intact and a closer inspection had revealed all the pages to be present and accounted for, and thus in far better shape than most of the book merchant's stock.

The merchant in question eyed him shrewdly. "Mm, that's a rare one. Probably worth a lot… What've you got?"

Gary fumbled through his rucksack and retrieved two cans of peas, one of beets, and another of peeled new potatoes. "Two days' worth of digging."

"Keep going," said the woman.

"What the hell d'you think I'm made of?" Gary balked, but in truth he wanted the book and knew he was prepared to offer a lot more than vegetables for it. So he pulled out a tin of spotted dick sponge pudding.

The woman gaped down at it. "Goodness, haven't seen one of those in months." She held all the cans to her chest before tucking them into a bag at her feet, then handed over the book and said, "'My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy.'"

Gary narrowed his eyes. "What?"

" _Henry VI._ " But before Gary could comment, she turned away to haggle with another customer. He was tempted to go after her, to make her explain— then he looked at the book in his hands and flipped to the index, eager to begin.

 

Soon after the end, Gary learned to take his natural scavenging skills to the next level. He could look at an abandoned row of houses and deduce which one hadn't yet been plundered, sprint in, grab the valuables – nonperishable food, tools, anything that could be traded – and be out again and on his way a few minutes later.

On a lark, he also once pocketed a copy of _Ulysses_. The dust-jacket was scuffed, really a bit tatty, but the book was thick and full of incomprehensible words, and so probably worth its weight in bullion cubes.

He only started reading it out of begrudging curiosity, but when he was a hundred pages in, he was surprised to find he enjoyed pace, the humor, the words that weren't so much incomprehensible as _imaginative_.

It only took him six hours to finish. By that time, he knew he needed more.

So Gary read Joyce and James and Elliott. Asimov and Tolkien. Dickens, Wilde, and at last, Shakespeare. A few were acquired by chance, pilfered from homes that had already been picked clean. The rest were had through bargaining. He found himself standing before the book merchant's stall in the old Victoria Station, chatting with the proprietress – whose name, he now knew, was Doris – at least once a week.

If Doris knew what Gary was, she made no mention of it. He was, after all, a well-paying, _regular_ customer. Hell, he even got there early to avoid the rush, which also allowed him to coax Doris into making a recommendation or two. He picked up a narrow paperback. "What about this one?"

"Feeling nostalgic, are we?" she laughed.

"What do you mean?"

"Surely you've read it before?"

Gary shook his head, running a thumb over the embossed lettering on the cover: _Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban_ by J. K. Rowling. A little sticker on the corner proclaimed: _Special Edition: Over 50 Million Copies Sold!_ "I guess I've been out of the loop," he said, frowning and searching his memory. Nothing from King—but then, yes: the info bank implanted by the Network coughed up a string of numbers which detailed the timeline of so-called Pottermania. Oh.

Doris pursed her lips, staring at him for a moment. Then she proffered another book. "You'll want to start with this one."

Gary took it back to the flat he'd been squatting in, settled into his favorite chair, and read it cover-to-cover.

Then he read it again.

The next day, he went back to Victoria Station, his palms itching a little as he waited for Doris to open her stall for business. But Doris shook her head. "I haven't seen a copy of _Chamber of Secrets_ in months. I can keep an eye out for you… but if you can't wait to see what happens next, as I suspect is the case, you might try Albert Sullivan's booth in Convent Garden."

" _Chamber of Secrets_?" came a laugh from behind Gary. "Sully hasn't had it for half a year! I know: my youngest's been after me to find a copy since March."

Doris' face brightened. "Hello, Andy! Then it seems you've some competition. This young man just got through _Philosopher's Stone_. Isn't that right?"

"Yeah," said Gary, a little testily. He turned round to see the newcomer— and his jaw dropped. It was Andy Knightly, King's own wingman, best friend… Best everything, really. If the Network had left Gary with only a selection of King's memories, half of them involved the man standing before him.

For his part, Knightly had taken a step backward and was scrutinizing Gary from crown to toe. "You made it out of there," he said, slowly.

"Yes." And in the part of Gary's body where there was a chest but no heart, he felt a twinge. But hell—if King had given him anything, it was balls. He stuck out his hand. "I'm Gary."

Knightly stared down at the proffered palm—Gary realized belatedly how dirty it was: grime caking his nail, grease and mud on his wrist, and a thin sliver of blue on his index finger where he'd nicked himself climbing over a fence. Then Knightly grasped it and squeezed. "I can't say it's good to meet you," he said.

"No," Gary agreed.

There wasn't much else to say. Knightly paid for his books – a head of lettuce bought him a battered police thriller and a couple of children's – and told Doris to have a good one. He didn't meet Gary's eye again.

But Gary watched him go. He was curious and excited and impatient. And reckless: he bought a copy of _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ in exchange for four cans of processed pork, tucked it into his bag, and made a mental note to come back at the very same time the following week.


End file.
